


Bargaining

by elementalv



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: M/M, mcshep_match
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-15
Updated: 2009-11-15
Packaged: 2017-10-02 20:22:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,139
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10316
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elementalv/pseuds/elementalv
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Broken. Dick.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bargaining

_The fur — fake, but who the hell cared at this point — the fur was soft and sumptuous and more comfortable than anything he’d ever had against his skin before, and John swore he could feel each individual strand of it on his back and thighs and — Christ! He could feel it between his ass cheeks, which was just wrong, and now he was whimpering, because he would have been willing to swear he couldn’t go a third time, not at his age. But really, even when he’d been — oh god — he really was going for a third time, and as soon as he got out of this thing, he was going to kill Rodney for finding an Ancient orgasmatron and not even —_

_John came for the third time within two hours and promptly passed out._

*****

“Go away, Rodney. I’m busy.”

He was and happily so. Budgets were due in soon, and it was the one time of the year when John got to use some of the bullshit language he’d learned at his father’s knee. It wasn’t that he was all that fond of Patrick, but when John was writing about “optimizing inventory utilization” and “growing personnel numbers,” he felt close to the old bastard. Sort of. And yeah, not really, but there was a vague feeling of family that John kind of liked, because it was family he’d been born into, and that made him feel almost normal. Almost like maybe, the next time he was on Earth, he could actually talk to Patrick and Dave in their own language.

Or maybe not. It wasn’t like he could tell them how he was using the art of the deal to navigate the military budget process on behalf of a base in another galaxy.

“You’re doing _paperwork_.”

In John’s opinion, Rodney didn’t need to make it sound like John was molesting children, but then again, Rodney had never really seen John get into paperwork, so maybe his tone of voice was understandable.

“Got it in one. Guess that’s why you’re the smartest man in two galaxies, huh?”

For John, the real question was whether or not he should requisition a few amphibious assault vehicles. It wasn’t like they needed them or anything, but he figured if he gave Landry something to say no to right off the bat, he might be able to get what he really wanted, which was a few dozen Segways and maybe a spare sarcophagus, if they should happen to come across one. He thought about it for a moment, remembered “addictive,” and went ahead and deleted it from the spreadsheet.

“No, seriously — paperwork?”

At that, John looked up and couldn’t help but pity Rodney for not grasping the joy of a well-written piece of bullshit to justify the expedition’s urgent need for two dozen Playstation 3s. That had been last year’s victory, and he still savored the look on Lorne’s face when they’d arrived. Still, as far as John knew, Rodney remained unaware of that particular coup; in an unexpected and rare fit of solidarity, Caldwell had quietly told John that he’d labeled the shipment as ordnance. John and Lorne held a meeting with the military personnel later that week and made it clear that if anyone spilled the beans to the civilians, John would cheerfully hand that soldier over to the scientists. The thought of doing scut work — _civilian_ scut work — until the end of their tour on Atlantis had, so far, been enough to keep their lips sealed.

Rodney was still waiting for an answer, so John sighed and said, “What will it take for you to go away?”

“You don’t have what it takes to buy me off, Colonel McGene,” he said, giving John the clue he needed to figure out why Rodney was bugging him so early in the day.

John narrowed his eyes at him and said, “And you think you have what it takes to bribe me into helping you?”

“Elizabeth —”

“Elizabeth isn’t about to get involved in this discussion. Not after the last time.”

Rodney pinked up nicely, but otherwise ignored John’s comment and moved on to his second argument without hesitation. John had to admire him for it, and he took a moment to make note of Rodney’s technique so he could practice it on Lorne some time. “It’s your —”

“My duty is to ensure the safety of everyone currently stationed on Atlantis as well as to command a multinational force of armed personnel. I’m also required and enjoined to issue monthly threat assessments of the Wraith as well as to maintain a current and working knowledge of the Ori situation. Once a year, I’m required to submit an operating budget, complete with a list of anticipated personnel and equipment needs, which I’m working on right now, to ensure the expedition will continue to function effectively. Further down the list — _much_ further down the list — if I have time, I’m also to assist the scientific personnel in their research of Ancient technology.”

Rodney stared.

John smiled.

“Fine,” he said — snarled, really, in John’s opinion — “in that case, half a pound of Kona.”

“And a bag of dark chocolate Hershey’s Kisses.” Rodney drew breath, and John added, “Which I know you have, because I saw last month’s manifest from the _Daedalus._”

Rodney turned an unbecoming shade of red — almost purple, really — sputtered for a moment and then clenched his jaw before spitting out, “Agreed.”

John’s smile grew wider. “Excellent. I’ll make myself available to you at 1600 hours.”

Rodney didn’t say anything else as he turned on his heel and stalked out of the room. _Like shooting fish in a barrel_, John thought, humming with satisfaction as he deleted a sentence from the Segway line-item justification and replaced it with something that had a better chance of convincing Landry to see things his way.

*****

It was closer to 1630 by the time John made it down to Rodney’s lab, and that was mostly because he knew from long experience that Rodney was likely to try to punish him by making him wait. Ordinarily, he’d go along with that, because it gave him time to improve his video golf scores, but that afternoon, he spent the extra half hour going over the budget with Lorne and betting him that Atlantis would, in fact, get at least a dozen Segways during the next fiscal year.

Radek walked in behind John and said, “Colonel.”

“Hey. Where’s Rodney?” It was probably a stupid question. On his way to the lab, John heard raised voices that were at least two corridors away, and even though he hadn’t been able to identify them with any certainty, chances were that Rodney was somewhere in the thick of it.

“He is arguing with Simpson about the nature of the device he wishes you to test.”

When Radek didn’t say anything else, John said, “Okay, I’ll bite. _Where_ are they arguing?”

“Lab five.” Lab five was actually four corridors away, and John was kind of impressed by the volume Simpson and Rodney achieved.

John looked at Radek for a few seconds then pursed his lips. “Think there’ll be a winner anytime soon?”

“Unlikely. They’ve only been arguing for two hours.”

“That why you banished them?”

Radek nodded. “Migraine.” When John still didn’t move, Radek added, “It will go worse for you if you arrive any later than you are about to. You know this, Colonel.”

John sighed. “Yeah. Okay. Send help if I miss my next check-in.”

“Yes, yes,” Radek said absently, waving John off.

John left Radek and reluctantly headed toward lab five. It wasn’t that he was averse to light switch duty — especially with chocolate and coffee in the offing — it was more that Rodney tended to forget that John was a human being with feelings and shit. Not that John was actually capable of expressing said feelings and shit, but that was beside the point, which was the fact that John had such things, and they tended to get crushed flat whenever Rodney was steamrolling his way to yet another new discovery. John paused in the corridor and blinked. He suspected he’d just had a whatsit — an epiphany — and he figured that maybe he should tell Heightmeyer about it while the thought was still there. Then he realized she would ask him how he _felt_ about it, and that would shoot his day all to hell. All in all, he’d rather deal with Rodney on a rampage, which hey, cool! There he was.

“I realize the United States military has done its utmost best to crush what little native intelligence you have remaining, Colonel,” Rodney said, catching sight of John as soon as he showed up in the doorway, “but I didn’t think the brainwashing was so severe as to prevent you from telling time.”

Oh, yeah. That was Rodney at his finest. John occasionally thought it should — he didn’t know — maybe bug him a little that Rodney’s sarcasm was more than a little hot. He’d think about asking Heightmeyer if he should be concerned, but then he’d think that she would probably ask him how he _felt_ about it and decide it wasn’t important. What _was_ important was that with very little effort, John could wind Rodney up and get that dose of sarcasm pretty much whenever he was in the mood. During times like this, when things were ridiculously quiet and peaceful, and not even the Genii were gunning for them, Rodney ripping through projects was its own kind of comfort.

“Well, you know what paperwork is like,” John said as slowly as he could manage without actually sounding like he’d suffered a stroke somewhere along the line. “Go too fast, and you might end up with a paper-cut or something.”

Rodney didn’t bother to turn red. He just shot a scathing look at John and said, “It’s on the _computer_.”

“Repetitive stress injury,” John said promptly. Before Rodney could answer, John looked at his watch and said, “The mess is serving lasagna tonight, so whatever it is, I’d kind of like —”

“Lasagna?”

“Oh, for god’s sake,” Simpson muttered. She unplugged her pad and stalked out of the room, muttering, “One mention of food, and he —” She was moving quickly, so John didn’t catch the rest of it.

Rodney looked shocked. “Did she just leave?”

“Looks like it. Now where’s the thingy?”

“‘Thingy?’ You’re calling what may be the greatest discovery we’ve made to date a _‘thingy?’”_

“Yes, Rodney, I am,” John said, sauntering a little further into the room to allow the door to close behind him. “You haven’t bothered to tell me what you think it is, so for now, ‘thingy’ works rather well, if I do say so myself.”

“I hate you. I hate you with the fiery passion of —”

“This it?” It looked like a cross between an exam table and a seventies-style bachelor pad sex platform, covered with royal blue and purple fur and trimmed out by some kind of silver fabric. It had stirrups, and there were D-rings in strategic locations, maybe for tying someone down. In short, it was the tackiest thing John had ever seen in his life, and it was the first thing he’d seen that made him think it was possible that not every Ancient had had a stick shoved up his (or her — John wasn’t sexist) ass.

“Hm? Yes,” Rodney said, his voice taking on the rhythm and cadence of Learned Professor About To Share His Wisdom. “It’s clearly —”

“Made for sex!” John said, thinking about the possibilities. He was pretty sure that once he initialized it, he and Rodney would be able to get up to all sorts of fun with each other.

“It is _not!_”

“Look at it!”

“It is a precisely calibrated tool that’s clearly designed —”

“For two or more consenting adults to get it on,” John said. He sent a firmly worded command to Atlantis to make sure the door stayed locked no matter who wanted in and started peeling out of his uniform. Sure, he wasn’t off duty for another twenty minutes, but it wasn’t like anyone would know. As far as everyone else was concerned, John was helping Rodney with a new and interesting device.

Rodney managed to spit out, “For medical use including therapeutic massage, you pervert!” Then he blinked when he saw what John was doing. “Oh, hey. You’re getting naked.”

“That big brain of yours never quits, does it?” John waggled his eyebrows, to Rodney’s apparent disgust, and kicked off his pants and underwear. He let Rodney get a good look at him then turned to study the table. He thought _On_ at it, and when nothing happened, he said, “Maybe I have to get in it, like the command chair.”

“What? Wait. Damn it, John, let me get my — Yes, fine, climb onto the _unknown device_ before I have a chance to — hey.” Rodney stared at his pad and started typing one-handed in a way that absolutely did not remind John of what else Rodney could do one-handed.

John scootched himself around on the fur and said, “Hey what?”

“Um — I don’t —”

Right around then, the table woke up full blast, and it turned out the D-rings were for something else, because the table had built-in straps that looked and felt like silk but had the tensile strength of steel, because once they wrapped around John’s ankles and wrists, he couldn’t stretch them at all.

“Rodney, what —”

“Oh. Oh, shit. Off. Off, off, off. Damn it, John, turn it off!”

He was trying. Sort of. But that fake fur had taken on a life of its own, and the table was doing other things, things that felt really, _really_ good, and John couldn’t quite manage to focus his thoughts enough to turn the thing off. But really, did he want to just then? Because he couldn’t remember the last time he’d had a massage as good as the one he was getting now, and yeah, it was a little disconcerting to have his ass cheeks pulled apart like that, but the twisty, vibrating dildo-thing pushing its way inside wasn’t all that bad, and maybe John could get used to something like this. Rodney’s voice fell away as John got lost in the sensation.

*****

The next night, John limped around his quarters, figuring it would be better in the long run if he kept moving. If he stayed as still as he wanted to, his muscles would end up getting stiff, and John honestly couldn’t bear the thought of any part of him getting stiff in the foreseeable future. He stopped moving when he heard a quiet, hesitant knock. His two choices were to answer it or ignore it, and neither one was all that appealing. After a moment, though, he answered it. If he didn’t, Rodney would haul Carson down for yet _another_ off-the-record exam, and John just wasn’t up to it.

“Come in,” he said, telling the door to open.

Rodney paused for a moment then held out the coffee and chocolate. “Here.”

“Thanks.” John started to reach for them, but every single muscle in his body hurt from the night before, and he came close to seizing up. A guy his age — _any_ age — wasn’t meant to come five times in under three and a half hours, a theory which was supported by the fact that John’s balls had run dry the last two times he came. In theory, dry orgasms sounded interesting; in practice, not so much. The other problem from coming so much was that he’d clenched his entire body all five times, and the result was that he felt like he’d done Iron Man triathlon without bothering to train first.

Rodney pushed up on his toes and said, “I thought maybe, since we both have the night off, we could —”

John interrupted. “You broke my dick.”

“What? I did _not!_ You were the idiot who crawled onto it without even _talking_ to me first!”

Okay, he had a point.

“Okay,” John said. “You might have a point. But my dick is still broken.”

“Carson said you were all right!”

“Carson quietly suggested I not plan on coming anytime in the next month or so. I think he’s worried about nerve damage.”

“Oh. Well. I guess I’ll just —” His ego and hopes deflated, Rodney sighed and turned around to leave.

“Wait.” It was against his better judgment, but John couldn’t take seeing Rodney skulk away like that, especially since he had a point: it kind of _was_ John’s fault. “My dick is broken, but that doesn’t mean we can watch a movie or something.”

“Really?” John hated it when Rodney’s face lit up like that, because it reminded him that one of these days, he would probably have to get around to _telling_ Rodney that he loved him instead of expecting Rodney to just get it. Which Rodney probably did, because who else but John would put up with rampaging sex tables in the name of Rodney’s dream of fame and fortune? Besides which —

“Yeah. Really. And maybe you could give me that rubdown you promised me last night,” John said.

“Um, yeah. About that rubdown —”

“You promised —” Rodney went into the bathroom and came out with a tube of Ben-gay in hand.

“And you promised to help me with that device yesterday!”

“Broken. Dick.” John didn’t understand why Rodney was having a hard time with the concept.

Rodney made a flappy motion with his left hand and said, “Thanks to you, the device is _also_ broken, so I think you owe me at least five hours of light switch duty a week for the next month.”

“I don’t owe you a goddamn thing.”

“Whatever,” Rodney said. He continued listing his reasons for John to give in on this point, but since Rodney was also carefully removing John’s t-shirt and sweatpants at the same time, he didn’t think Rodney was very serious about it. Once John was naked, Rodney helped him lie down on the bed then squirted Ben-gay into his hands to warm it up a little. A moment after that, he pushed firmly into John’s back, and for the second time in a little over twenty-four hours, John got lost in the sensation.

It wasn’t often that they had quiet weeks like this, and sure, John would rather have done something else on their night off, but this was pretty damn good, too. He had coffee and chocolate, both of which he would probably share with Rodney in the morning, and if Rodney didn’t bitch too much, there was a chance he’d get a morning blow job from John. In the meantime, John would take his moments of peace where he could find them and enjoy the pure comfort of Rodney’s hands and body.


End file.
